When you use this multimedia exhibit…you’ll listen to different audio files.
One audio file just sounds like synthesised beeps and squeaks, but when you hear it a second time, you’ll swear you can hear someone talking.
When you’re trying to hear a friend talking to you in a noisy room, your brain often uses phonemic restoration to make sense of what they’re saying.
One part of your brain handles everyday noises while another part of your brain handles phonemes, which are units of sound in language.
These brain areas also work together, so once your language centre processes the normal sentence in the exhibit, it can’t help but influence how you ‘hear’ words in the beeps and squeaks.
Sometimes they bounce between different parts of your brain.
When you re-listen to the synthesised audio files in this exhibit you cannot seem to ‘unhear’ the words.
You probably didn't even realise that the synthesised audio file contained words when you heard it the first time.
Separate areas of your brain work together to hear and process speech.
The right hemisphere of your brain processes everyday sounds like the beeps and squeaks in the synthesised audio file.
However, language tends to be processed in the left hemisphere of your brain.
As you listen again to the beeps and squeaks in the synthesised audio file (after hearing the normal audio of someone saying a sentence), the sound gets diverted to the left hemisphere of your brain and it uses phonemic restoration to translate the words.
So even though your right hemisphere is processing the beeps and squeaks, the left hemisphere of your brain can’t help but hear the words.